Japan's Weekly Blu-ray & CD Rankings for Apr 16 - 22

octal9 said:
someone needs to hurry up and sub UN-GO episode:0 Inga-ron before i go crazy - been waiting way too long to see it! hopefully un-go will get a second season - great show!!!

articuzwolf said:
now I demand season 3 announcement for KSnH

dtshyk said:

*6, *1,978 *1,978 Chihayafuru vol.5

dtshyk said:

Single CD
*4, 37,326 *37,326 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Master vol.2 Anzu
*6, 33,453 *33,453 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Master vol.1 Rin
*7, 33,352 *33,352 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Master vol.4 Kaede
*8, 32,116 *32,116 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Master vol.3 Kanako
*9, 30,145 *30,145 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Master vol.5 Rika

jmal said:

Maybe not until they release an iDOLM@STER 3 game, assuming they do, or at least some other game to tie it into. They could do a Cinderella Girls spinoff I suppose. They've got to do something more in anime form with the franchise though. It's way too successful to not keep going.

phoenixalia said:
Oh just noticed this! Hiiro no Kakera's "Nee" is on the list! I'm happy for it! It deserves more views, Fujita Maiko is just awesome.

dtshyk said:

Single CD
*4, 37,326 *37,326 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Master vol.2 Anzu
*6, 33,453 *33,453 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Master vol.1 Rin
*7, 33,352 *33,352 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Master vol.4 Kaede
*8, 32,116 *32,116 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Master vol.3 Kanako
*9, 30,145 *30,145 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Master vol.5 Rika
11, 23,763 *23,763 Fate/Zero 2nd Season "to the beginning"
25, *4,309 **4,309 Hiiro no Kakera "Nee"
31, *2,152 **2,152 Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon Character Song vol.1
33, *2,004 **2,004 Acchi Kocchi "Acchi de Kocchi de"
42, *1,654 *15,551 Taketatsu Ayana "Sinfonia! Sinfonia!!!"
49, *1,391 **1,391 Acchi Kocchi "Te wo Gyu Shitene"

Album CD
*4, 12,690 12,690 Miyano Mamoru "Fantasista"
*5, 10,274 64,183 ClariS "Birthday"
42, *2,135 18,156 Rin & Len "Vocalogemini"
47, *1,923 *8,584 Aoi Eir "Prayer"

dtshyk said:
*8, *1,380 *1,380 Mobile Suit Gundam AGE vol.3 Deluxe Edition

jmal said:

Points will increase every day, based on ranking, from solicitation until 7 days after release date.


Not with any accuracy, no. Stalker does provide estimates based on performance so far (see the number next to "最終予測累積ポイント" in any given release's details page) but it's only going to be remotely accurate once the title has been up for sale for some time. Predicting what ~60-90 days worth of preorder sales (for a v1) will be, based on the first 5-10, or even 20-30, days of sales is almost impossible. Maybe when you're 2-3 weeks away from release you can start to take the estimates more seriously.

Take Medaka Box for example: if you calculated its final sales based on its first few days of rankings, you'd think it was a guaranteed 10k seller. But this would be misleading - it's barely made the top 1000 since then, and at this rate will sell very very little.

For a title that was only recently solicited and doesn't come out until June, it's much too early to make any predictions.


Well, BD/DVD sales for Gundam series are important, but yes all the accompanying merch is more important. The issue with AGE is that nobody is buying the accompanying merch either.

jmal said:

The stalker estimates say 560 BD and 1284 DVD by release. But again, it's way way way too early to take that seriously. The algorithms Stalker uses to estimate (based on current performance vs number of days left until release) aren't meant to be applied to releases with so little data (i.e. not many days solicited) available.

It comes out 6/22, so check back for an estimate on 6/01, I'd say. In the meantime, ranking is a bit more telling: even the DVD has been ranking outside of the top 1000, so if I really had to take a guess now I'd say BDs won't rank and DVDs will do 1.5-2k at best, unless things turn around drastically. It's definitely not looking like it'll be an otomege adaptation success story like UtaPri or Hakuouki were.

mitch3315 said:


Season 2 when?

jmal said:

And they only cost ¥700 each. Character song singles are normally at least ¥1200, and previous iDOLM@STER ones for the main girls were like ¥1800. Even so, first week sales alone for these five earned a cool ¥119,000,000 (~$1.5 million USD). Not bad...


Heh, she's been the most popular character as far as fanart goes ever since her card first went up, so I think the music is entirely secondary. =P

jmal said:

Well, if AKB0048 is smart it'll bundle exclusive AKB48 singles in all of the LE BDs and then AKB otaku will drive its sales through the roof. It could easily be the best selling show of the season if the anime production committee successfully connects it to the larger AKB fanbase. But that's far from guaranteed.

The only obvious stand-out so far is Haiyore! Nyaruko-san. Eureka Seven AO has the second best performance overall, so far. Accel World is doing ok, but mostly because of a rush of orders when it was first solicited.

Titles ranking consistently in the top 300 besides AO and Nyaruko are the above-mentioned Accel World, as well as Hyouka, Jormungand and Saki Achiga-hen. I expect Hyouka being 11 volumes to really hurt it though, so I don't think it'll end up a top seller unless it really really blows people away.

Most shows are bouncing all over the place right now since it's so early in the season. Some shows aren't solicited at all yet.

jmal said:

Well, no, I'm not sure I understand why you think that based on what I said. And my main verdict is that it's way way too early to have a verdict.

But based purely on the super preliminary and likely highly misleading early data we have now, Nyaruko-san and Eureka Seven AO are doing the best at the moment, and Hyouka, Accel, Jormungand and Saki are all also doing pretty okay (within the top 300) at the moment. Everything could be completely different three weeks from now.

So once again, trying to predict best sellers a couple weeks into a new season is basically impossible. It's far too early. Too much can change as more episodes air and more shows get solicited.

Watupfoo said:


jmal never said that, all he did was give you his predictions, things might change in the future, so yeah.

P,S i don't remember hiiro being a popular franchise, i could be wrong though, i've seen popular game's adaptions selling low (Majikoi for example) and vice-versa, anything is possible within the otaku world.

Watupfoo said:


I don't think youtube has anything to do with deciding a series popularity, the openings of some of the least popular series get 500k+ views, but that's beside the point, i'm always lurking around Siliconera and Getchu and never heard or seen anything related to Hiiro or something similar, fandisks and stuff don't really show the popularity of a game, they're like OVA's, and many non-popular animes have just those ;p
as for Majikoi, according to Getchu, it placed first in 2009's top selling eroge games.
but the adaption didn't sell well.

Watupfoo said:


really? guess i either missed it or the news were old, but like i said, Sequels and fandisk or the console they're on don't really mean anything, Idea factory is known for making Otome games and when they released Neptunia and Agarest of war (which are both "Moe girls" thingie) On PS3 only, they made the money they didn't even dream of making, see what i'm trying to get at?
It's not about how much fandisks or sequels/prequels a franchise has, it's about the fanbase and how well the project was received.

Edit: Yes, 2009's top selling eroge's adaption sold so low (it was a horrible adaption though) that's why i said it's unpredictable. and if i remember correctly, Majikoi had no fandisks at all, though it's getting a sequel (or it already did if i recall), so yeah.

jmal said:

While my exoertise in Japanese music outside of anisong and Vocaloid is almost nil, I do know that AKB48 is pretty much one of the top 10 or top 5 acts in all of Japan and their singles regularly sell more than a million copies.

Put another way, the AKB fanbase is vastly, vastly larger than almost anything else that's been made into an anime to date.